Asian American / Asian Research Institute
The City University of New York
We invite students, scholars, and/or practitioners, within and outside of CUNY, to share their innovative research and creative works, pedagogical projects, programmatic efforts, models for organizing and activism, and other activities at CUNY that address critical issues in Asian American studies and/or communities.
Prof. Francisco Delgado’s current project examines how Chamorro poets reimagine the landscape of California as an extension of their home island. In particular, through a careful reading of works by Chamorro poets like Clarissa Mendiola and Lehua Taitano, both of whom are currently based out of California, he argues that the nature of Chamorro identity and community is as fluid and vast as the Pacific Ocean itself.
Our Laundry, Our Town (Empire State Editions, 2022) is a memoir that decodes and processes the fractured urban oracle bones of Alvin Eng’s growing up in Flushing, Queens, a neighborhood of that singular universe that was New York City in the 1970s. As a theatre practitioner and professor, Alvin discovered the under-chronicled Chinese influence on Thornton Wilder’s seminal Americana drama, Our Town.
In honor of Asian Heritage Month, the BMCC Theatre Program presents a 15-minute reading of David Henry Hwang’s play Trying to Find Chinatown, and a Town Hall discussion on “How does Theatre create Community and Identity for Asian Americans and all under-represented voices?”